Two years ago, it wasn’t Shane Lowry’s golf that got him into the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill, it was the logo on his collar.
With Mastercard being the primary tournament sponsor – and Lowry being a Mastercard ambassador – he was always going to be a primary contender for a tournament invite, but he was coming off the back of a disappointing year in which, despite finishing inside the top 20 in three of the four majors, had seen him finish the regular PGA Tour season ranked 76th and was forced to sit out the playoffs.
This also meant that he was not exempt into any of the Signature Events, but he played well at Bay Hill and played alongside Scottie Scheffler in the final group. Unfortunately for Lowry, that was the same week that Scheffler’s much-discussed putting woes were put to bed – ironically after Rory McIlroy had said he thought Scottie should switch to a mallet putter and Scheffler duly obliged – but the Offaly man finished in third place that week and he’s not had to rely on sponsors’ goodwill to get him into any of the Signature Events that have followed.
So, if he’s looking for a silver lining as he conducts his post-Cognizant Classic post-mortem and gears up for another tilt at Bay Hill, there it is. He’s a much more accomplished all-round golfer now than he was back then.
As hard as it will be to stomach the way he let victory slip through his grasp at PGA National, for 69 holes he was the best player in the field and for the final 33 of those, he was head and shoulders above the competition.
Granted, it was one of the weaker PGA Tour fields we’ll see this side of the Tour Championship, but even still, it was a dominant performance until it wasn’t. He was leading the field in approach play, his short game was up to its usual standard, and his putter, which has often been his bluntest weapon, was red hot and razor sharp.
Two bad swings cost him the tournament – he doesn’t need any of us to tell him that – and it was simply the pressure of attempting to end a seven-year individual winless drought on the PGA Tour that got to him.
In an ideal world, he’d retreat and lick his wounds, but the modern PGA Tour doesn’t allow for that – not when missing out on a Signature Event can be so costly in terms of both points and money and rumours of an even more cutthroat tour next year continue to circulate – so he has no choice but to get back on stage and face the music.
And again, in an ideal world, his next start wouldn’t see him face a golf course with water on seemingly every other hole after his two late visits to the drink on Sunday, but again, there’s a silver lining to be taken. It’s a brute of a course, and exactly the kind of test he typically thrives on.
After that third-place finish there in 2024, he bagged another top-10 finish last year, and he’s made no secret of the fact that he loves playing on the turf in his adopted home state.
If he can manage to block out the final three holes of the week past and manage to conjure up something close to what he produced in the previous 69, he’ll be well on his way to putting the crushing disappointment behind him.
There’s no better way to silence the doubters than by dusting himself off and putting in another four good rounds, and, if he does that, he’ll be among the tournament leaders when we get to the business end on Sunday.
His play over the past 24 months has proven that he’s more than capable of doing that, and who knows, maybe this time it goes his way.
To quote Rocky Balboa: It’s not how hard you can hit, it’s how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. And in Lowry’s own words in the immediate aftermath, he’s got no choice but to do exactly that.
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